description
- The Science Communication actions draw their inspiration from the fact that young Europeans feel under-informed about science and are turning away from scientific studies and careers. Generally there is little opportunity for the public, to enter the world of science and apply their scientific knowledge. To reach the EC’s aim to hardwire science into youth culture, serious rethinking is required and entirely novel activities have to complement current top-down approaches of conveying science. As movies and music can not communicate complicated content, youth culture offers only one efficient way to convey health science in an appropriately complex fashion: computer games. They can transport complicated messages and players can spend an excessive time in immersive worlds. We therefore propose a revolutionary on-line computer game simulating the scientific endeavour, where knowledge of scientific facts will constitute a significant advantage. This game will create a large community of more than 100.000 players, enabled to communicate in real time via a state of the art interface to stimulate exchanges about game relevant topics including science. This game should allow players to choose one of several research fields from areas funded by the DG health. Then they can commit time and effort to carry out typical tasks of a scientist in an abstract way, in order to gain an impression of a scientists’ routine. In addition it will be essential for the game to inform about science issues and produce a constant flux of scientific information, which players have to sieve through to identify the relevant data for their projects. This will encourage players to learn about the FP7 areas of research, review some of the key findings in these fields and most importantly use this knowledge to their own advantage in the game. The objective of this proposal is therefore to create an environment where players are more informed and excited about science and associated career options.